Big Joe and the
Dynaflows Are Throwing a Rockhouse Party and Everyone Is Invited!
New Blues/Roots
Album Set for February 15 Release on Severn Records
ANNAPOLIS, MD - Severn Records announces a February 15,
2019, release date for Big Joe and the Dynaflows’s new album, Rockhouse
Party, featuring acclaimed blues singer/drummer Big Joe Maher. With
distribution by MRI/The Orchard/Sony,
Rockhouse Party will be released on both CD and vinyl formats.
The colorful album cover graphics were designed by Big Joe’s good friend, Marty
Baumann, who works for Disney-Pixar Films.
The new album was produced by Big Joe and Kevin McKendree,
who also contributed piano and organ on the sessions, which were recorded at
McKendree’s Rockhouse Studio in Franklin, Tennessee (hence the album’s title).
The rest of the players on Rockhouse Party included three-time
Blues Music Award bassist “Mookie” Brill (who also sings lead vocals for the
first time on record), plus the talented guitar tandem of Robert Frahm and
Yates McKendree, Kevin’s then- 16-year old son (who’s now a ripe old 17).
Another teenage phenom, Erin Coburn, adds her tasty guitar licks on one song
and backing vocals on three more. The tracks showcase both a number of original
songs as well as several cool covers.
“Rockhouse
Party represents my love of pure blues and R& B,” states Big Joe
Maher. “The songs I write come from my heart and tell the same story as all the
great blues artists have done for the last 100 years: the story of life!”
Big Joe
is also proud and honored to announce that he’s playing drums on Delbert
McClinton’s upcoming CD and will be performing for the 15th time on
McClinton’s legendary “Sandy Beaches Cruise” in early 2019. Additionally, Maher
has been playing gigs with his long-time buddy Anson Funderburgh, and will be
performing with him in Europe next month.
Rockhouse Party also reunites Big Joe Maher
with Severn Records, the label that released his 2011 CD, You Can’t Keep
a Big Man Down, 1998’s I’m Still Swingin’ (which won a
Washington Area Music Association award for “Best Blues Recording”) and his
2000 release, All Night Long.
“This
album was something I have wanted to do for a while,” relates Maher. “It brings
together some of my favorite musicians - the McKendrees for one. I gave Kevin
his start in the music business with his first gig with the Dynaflows back in
1987. We have played together off and on since then; and then his genius son,
who I have known since his birth, he’s simply the best. Only way I can describe
Yates is that he’s a 50-year-old man in a 17-year-old body. I have known Robert
Frahm since he was about 17 and now at 37 is a true bluesman on the guitar. I
met Tom “Mookie” Brill playing the now-defunct Double Door Inn in Charlotte,
North Carolina, in about 1982. From the minute I met him, we hit it off. We are
kindred souls who think alike, love great singing and follow the same deal. If
you can sing we love you! Tom had never sung solo on a record before and I felt
it was my duty to feature him on this project. The end result - he knocks it
out of the park!”
Based in the Washington, DC area, Big Joe Maher has been
performing blues and jazz for almost 50 years. In his high school jazz band, he
was able to play with such jazz greats as Clark Terry, Urbie Green, Mundell
Lowe and James Moody, which helped develop his innate style of swing playing
that permeates his music to this day. Over time, he’s shared the stage and
backed up a diverse group of blues, R&B and soul performers such as Jimmy
Witherspoon, Willie Dixon, Lazy Lester, Bullmoose Jackson, James “Thunderbird”
Davis, Nappy Brown, Otis Rush and Earl King, among others. In the late ‘80s,
after performing (and managing) a nine-piece DC swing band, The Uptown Rhythm
Kings, as well as several years as the drummer in the Tom Principato Band, Joe
formed his own five-piece jump-blues group, Big Joe & the Dynaflows. In
between touring and recording sessions, Joe was musical coordinator for Mick
Fleetwood’s club in Alexandria, Virginia, in the mid-90s. His knowledge of
local and national blues and jazz performers made him a natural for that gig,
and the club was booked with top-notch talent during his tenure. Joe’s also
produced a number of blues, jazz and R&B albums, including one by local DC
saxophone legend Joe Stanley.
In addition to his previous releases on Severn Records,
among the other labels Big Joe has recorded for include Black Top Records out
of New Orleans (his Layin’ in the Alley album won the 1994 WAMA
award for “Best blues Recording”), as well as the DC-based Powerhouse label,
which released his Good Rockin’ Daddy CD.
“I have
always loved blues; it’s like an infatuation with me,” Maher proclaims. “I have
been blessed to have played with some of the greatest blues and R& B
artists ever. All in all, this CD is ME.....this is the music I love and will
play till my last breath.....so sit back pour your beverage and let the Rockhouse
Party begin !!”
